


The Three Improbable Tasks of Granny Liesl

by AirgiodSLV



Category: The Affair of the Mysterious Letter - Alexis Hall
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28864482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: On the six-hundred-and-seventy-first day after Granny Liesl takes a new apprentice, the girl comes to her with a proposal.“Give me the secret to commanding the Stone Trolls of Gragh,” Sharazad says, “or I’ll slit your throat and weave an enchantment out of your intestines.”
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The Three Improbable Tasks of Granny Liesl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tipsy_Kitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tipsy_Kitty/gifts).



> Thank you to Tipsy_Kitty for the invitation to write this story. Thanks to linnyloo for beta-reading.
> 
> Warning: Mild (canon-typical) body horror.

On the six-hundred-and-seventy-first day after Granny Liesl takes a new apprentice, the girl comes to her with a proposal.

“Give me the secret to commanding the Stone Trolls of Gragh,” Sharazad says, “or I’ll slit your throat and weave an enchantment out of your intestines.”

The knife at her throat is quite keen, although Liesl has been immune to star-metals for centuries. She doesn’t mention that to Shaharazad.

“Nothing ever comes free, and you know well there’s a way these things are done,” Liesl scolds. “Mind your manners.”

Shaharazad scowls and sheaths the blade. “What must I do?”

Her current apprentice is precocious, far ahead of most girls her age—Liesl hadn’t expected this attempt for another five months. Fortunately, she always keeps a few quests tucked away for emergencies.

Liesl clears her throat and intones, “These three tasks you must complete, or forfeit life when next we meet.”

“Yes, yes,” agrees Shaharazad—she has no patience, that girl. “What are they?”

“First: Win the hand of a prince, of noble birth and great renown. Second: Bear in your cupped hand the beating heart of a newborn babe.”

Shaharazad crosses her arms and makes a face. Liesl hastily backtracks. “Yes, you’re right, far too easy. Very well. Second: Steal the greatest prize from a living dragon’s hoard.”

“Better,” says Shaharazad.

“Third,” Liesl continues, ignoring her: “Bottle the power of life and death, and bring it here to me. Then I will grant you what you seek.”

“Time limit?” asks Shaharazad.

Liesl waves her hand. “It’s your first impossible quest—consider this one a freebie.”

“I’m taking the nightwing glider,” Shaharazad announces, and goes to pack a bag.

She returns a year later, just when Liesl had begun to consider seeking out a new apprentice. They’re such a bother to break in, though, all tears and wailing and with no regard for the value of toad slime, so Liesl is glad to see Shaharazad home.

She only hopes the girl has managed the tasks, or Liesl will have to kill her messily as a warning to others, and then she really will need a new apprentice.

“Have you brought to me that which I sent you to seek?” Liesl asks awkwardly. She’s improvising, so the phrasing is a bit stiff, but she’d been weeding her herb garden and is unprepared to make grand pronouncements.

“Obviously,” says Shaharazad, and dumps a carpet bag onto LIesl’s wicker table.

“Would you like some tea before we get started?” Liesl asks. She’d never admit it, but she really has missed Shaharazad.

“No, I’d like to command the Stone Trolls of Gragh,” Shaharazad replies testily. “This has already set me behind schedule.”

“Very well. Have you brought back my nightwing glider?” Liesl asks. Shaharazad has dried leaves in her long black hair and cobwebs stuck to her boots, and she looks as though she’s just clawed her way through a bramble thicket.

“Yes,” Shaharazad answers, after the kind of pause an apprentice makes to weigh the exact nature of the question she’s been asked before she makes a truthful answer to a powerful witch.

“In one piece?” Liesl emphasizes.

Shaharazad looks shifty, and remains damningly silent. Then she yanks open the carpet bag. “Look, do you want all of this stuff or not?”

Liesl fixes her with a gimlet eye, but eventually nods. “You’ve won the hand of a noble prince?”

Shaharazad removes a cloth-wrapped bundle and thumps it onto the table. She flicks the wrappings off, and Liesl stares down at what is certainly a hand. A severed hand. Neatly cauterized, too; Shaharazad must have used a phoenix-blade to remove it.

Liesl clears her throat. “Not what I’d imagined, but you did stick to the letter of the agreement. I assume you have proof of the hand’s provenance?”

Shaharazad lifts one of the russet-brown fingers. “His signet ring.”

“Did you really ‘win’ this?” Liesl has to ask doubtfully.

“We made a wager,” Shaharazad says carelessly. “He’s not a very good gambler.”

“And he didn’t mind you cutting off his hand?” inquires Liesl.

Shaharazad shrugs. “He’s one of the Steel Magi. They’ll make him a better one.”

Liesl is forced to concede the point. “Next,” she continues, “the greatest treasure of a dragon’s hoard?”

Shaharazad reaches into the bag and produces a single sheet of paper, trifold-creased and yellowed with age. She smoothes it out onto the table. Liesl raises an eyebrow.

“I asked,” says Shaharazad, irritable and defensive as only a teenager can be. “This was it. A love letter, written by a princess she’d made off with centuries ago. The princess is dead, of course, but they were very happy until then, even with the inter-species complications.”

“How did you get it away from the dragon?” Liesl asks.

“I swapped it for a spell to reanimate a kindred spirit,” Shaharazad replies. “Her eyesight isn’t very good, so I don’t think she noticed, but it will be a fair trade the next time she has someone read it for her. She might even manage to invest the ghost in a more compatible body.”

Liesl debates whether this still counts as thievery, and decides that it does. “Good so far,” she approves. “And finally, the power of life and death, captured in a bottle?”

Shaharazad lifts a glass jug from the carpet bag and taps the cork. Inside, an immensely aggravated Guiennese mud-flea batters itself against the walls of its prison.

“Yes, it is infected with the dancing madness, and yes, before you ask, I’ve tracked down and destroyed every other carrier.” Shaharazad sounds both proud and annoyed about this feat. “The disease should be eradicated now, unless - or until? - you set this one loose. You’re welcome.”

Liesl takes the jug and gives it a satisfied little shake. The mud-flea is not amused.

“Well done, my girl,” Liesl proclaims. “You’ve earned your secret, and you shall have it. The instructions for commanding stone trolls are in the blue clothbound book on the second shelf in the kitchen, in between crossroads summoning rituals and my best recipes for vegetable stews. Open to the third break in the binding and read it in a mirror by the light of a waxing moon.”

Shaharazad nods once, acknowledging the fulfilment of their bargain. She traipses off in the direction of the house, hopefully to take a bath and rid herself of some of the leaves and cobwebs, but she stops before she reaches the door and turns back.

“I thought I had it worked out after the dragon,” Shaharazad says casually. “The prince was obvious—there was only one marriageable candidate who would consider wedding a woman, and I knew you would demand proof, which meant you really wanted the ring. I spent a month studying bark scrolls in the library-trees of Nivale before I found the sorcerous inscription hidden within the sigil.”

“Did you?” Liesl asks mildly. She sets down the jug and wiggles the ring free of its fleshy resting place. She has to clean it with her skirt before she can get a good look at the inscription—Shaharazad did a decent job with cauterization, but her preservation spells need work, and the hand has seen better-looking days.

“There’s only one living dragon in the Hundred Kingdoms: Agra-Honna-Vestid-Perrin-Lei of the Blackcrest Mountains,” Shaharazad continues. “You knew I wouldn’t bring you any old crown or antique sword of legend, which means you wanted that letter. For the signature, I thought, or the parchment. But then there was the mud-flea.”

“My dear girl,” says Liesl mildly, setting the ring atop the letter, next to the cracked wax seal. “Be very careful with how you proceed. At this point, you haven’t made any accusations, and I haven’t made any denials. It would be unfortunate if that were to change.”

They stare at one another for a long time, Granny Liesl and her apprentice, and then Shaharazad yields with a grudging nod. “It is for the blood, though,” she presses, and Liesl recognizes in her the wild hunger of youth, the ravenous desire for knowledge and magic and power.

“Yes,” she answers, granting Shaharazad that much. The girl can piece together the rest on her own. “It’s for the blood.”

Shaharazad nods again and turns back toward the house, clomping through Liesl’s geranium beds.

Remembering something that’s been on her mind for a year now, Liesl calls after her. “What enchantment would you have woven, girl, if you’d had my intestines?”

Shaharazad looks back at her, gaze unwavering. “I would have bound you into a golem with a clockwork heart and a harp shaped from your rib cage, and compelled you to play the Twice-Proscribed Chants of the Spheres.”

It’s a good answer, for a second-year apprentice. Third-year? Liesl isn’t sure how to count these things, when one’s tutelage has been interrupted by a year of questing.

She toasts Shaharazad with the jug containing the mud-flea, and wonders how long it will be before she and her apprentice next want something from one another.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Three Improbable Tasks of Granny Liesl | written by AirgiodSLV](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29740887) by [Tipsy_Kitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tipsy_Kitty/pseuds/Tipsy_Kitty)




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